Analyzing literature, architecture, and patterns of living, the author traces the persistent meanings of modernity, seeing in its chief concerns and expressions a will to change accompanied by a terror of life falling apart. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Creating the authentic France : struggles over French identity in the first half of the twentieth century / Herman Lebovics

Between memory and oblivion : concentration camps in German memory / Claudia Koonz.

In this volume, leading historians, anthropologists and ethnographers explore the relationship between collective memory and national identity in diverse cultures throughout history. Placing commemorations in their historical settings, the contributors disclose the contested nature of these monuments by showing how groups and individuals struggle to shape the past to their own ends. The volume is introduced by John Gillis's broad overview of the development of public memory in relation to the history of the nation-state. Other contributions address the usefulness of identity as a cross-cultural concept, the connection between identity, heritage, and history, national memory in early modern England, commemoration in Cleveland, the museum and the politics of social control in modern Iraq and many other issues. (source: Nielsen Book Data)
Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings of these uniquely modern phenomena. In this volume, leading historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers explore the relationship between collective memory and national identity in diverse cultures throughout history. Placing commemorations in their historical settings, the contributors disclose the contested nature of these monuments by showing how groups and individuals struggle to shape the past to their own ends. The volume is introduced by John Gillis' broad overview of the development of public memory in relation to the history of the nation-state. Other contributions address the usefulness of identity as a cross-cultural concept (Richard Handler), the connection between identity, heritage, and history (David Lowenthal), national memory in early modern England (David Cressy), commemoration in Cleveland (John Bodnar), the museum and the politics of social control in modern Iraq (Eric Davis), invented tradition and collective memory in Israel (Yael Zerubavel), black emancipation and the civil war monument (Kirk Savage), memory and naming in the Great War (Thomas Laqueur), American commemoration of World War I (Kurt Piehler), art, commerce, and the production of memory in France after World War I (Daniel Sherman), historic preservation in twentieth-century Germany (Rudy Koshar), the struggle over French identity in the early twentieth century (Herman Lebovics), and the commemoration of concentration camps in the new Germany (Claudia Koonz). (source: Nielsen Book Data)

BACONIAN EMPIRISM, COMPUTER ART, AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF CHAOS. AT THE HEART OF HARDISON'S INQUIRY US THE NOTION OF "HOLISTIC COMMUNICATIONS" - THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "MESSAGE" AND "STATIC" IN MODERN CULTURE - WHICH WILL BE MADE TANGIBLE IN THE TEXT ITSELF THROUGH THE USE OF BLACK AND WHITE (AND POSSIBLY COLOUR) ILLUSTRATIONS. SAYS SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE: "IF ANYONE QUALIFIES FOR THAT MUCH-ABUSED DESCRIPTION - RENAISSANCE MAN - OB HARDISON DOES ...NO AREA IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR HIM." THE PROOF WILL BE READILY FOUND IN DISAPPEARING THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT, A BOOK READERS WILL COMPARE TO GODEL, EACHER, BACH, GEORGE JOHNSON'S MACHINERY OF THE MIND, OR JAMES GLEICH'S CHAOS. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

New York : The Economist in association with Profile Books Ltd. and PublicAffairs, 2017.

Description

Book — ix, 257 pages : charts ; 25 cm.

Summary

Introduction: The idea of the west

Let battle commence

Inequality and fairness

Democracy and the art of self-entrapment

Setting America straight again

Britain, their Britain

European paralysis

The Japanese puzzle

Swedish and Swiss Houdinis

Silver hair and smart drones

Barbarians at the gate

The fate of the West.

"The West seems to be in retreat--even from itself--and cracks have appeared in the structures of international collaboration built after 1945. We live in a time of disintegration and rekindling of old nationalisms. Yet the end of the West has been predicted by academics, philosophers and rival statesmen for more than a hundred years. The West has proved itself to be tough--adaptable, flexible and able to evolve to meet the challenges of changing times. [The author] argues that in the face of new threats, we must resist attempts to close borders and minds, and work to remove obstacles that are blocking this evolutionary change. The fight is not lost. [This book] reveals that our record of overcoming our doubters and demons should give the world confidence that the idea of the West will again prevail. But to do so, we will have to return to our lodestars of openness and equality, keeping firmly in mind that without openness, the West cannot thrive; but without equality, the West cannot last."-- Provided by publisher.

What happens to Old World memories in a New World order? Svetlana Boym opens up a new avenue of inquiry: the study of nostalgia. Can one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes. (source: Nielsen Book Data)
What happens to Old World memories in a New World order? Svetlana Boym opens up a new avenue of inquiry: the study of nostalgia.. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes. (source: Nielsen Book Data)